Ymir's Brethren
by Basikilos
Summary: Abandoned and forgotten, Assassin Cross Eremes Guile wakes from a deep sleep to find himself alone with no memory of the past few years. Will he be able to escape with his companions? Or will he lose himself in the labyrinth of the biolabs?
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: All property of the wonderful Gravity. Ahh, RO nostalgia is always the best kind of nostalgia.

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Assassin Eremes Guile had been sleeping.

Slowly, he flickered back into consciousness, soft lights dancing hazily around the edges of his vision. His limbs felt leaden and strange.

How long had he been sleeping? He tried to focus, tried to piece together his fragmented memory.

A fire…there had been a fire. The tall man in a white coat who he saw every day had screamed and run, leaving Eremes alone, alone to die. Who was that tall man? He seemed so familiar, but try as he might, Eremes could not recall his name.

At some point, there had been some sort of fusion, and pain, lots and lots and lots of pain, and _power_. They had transcended him into an Assassin Cross somehow. He flexed his fingers, realizing for the first time that he possessed the knowledge that came with the skills of his new class.

He squeezed his eyes shut, racking his brain for more hints. One name in particular jumped out at him. Retha! No, he corrected himself, High Priestess Sorin. He had been tasked by his guild to safely escort her to Lighthalzen. What had become of her? Had he succeeded? Had he failed? He remembered their journey in crystal clear detail, but after their arrival at Lighthalzen he could recall no more than unreliable bits and pieces.

Be calm, he murmured to himself. Rushing would only lead to amateurish mistakes. Panic would only cloud his mind and hamper his abilities. Taking a deep breath, he steeled his nerves and opened his eyes, hoping for the best but expecting the worst.

Eremes was suspended in a viscous green gel, completely submerged from head to toe. Gasping, the liquid forced its way into and down his throat and he reflexively choked. His body reeled in confusion as his brain insisted that he was drowning while his lungs firmly replied that no, everything was quite under control.

He had to get out before he went insane. The glass tube was slick and frictionless, but his sharp eyes spotted a small crack near the top of the tube. Swimming upwards, Eremes forcefully hit his hands against the aberration, hoping that it would be enough.

It was.

The glass shattered, splintering into dozens of glittering pieces on the floor. The gooey liquid spilled out onto the floor and he gasped in the beautiful nothingness of air. Eremes glanced around the room and blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light. In a corner lay a set of katars wrapped within a clean white cloth, a tightly stoppered bottle, and his thief's clothes.

Gathering up the equipment, he realized how naked he had felt without a set of katars. Though they were slightly rusted, they would be better than nothing. Gripping one in each hand, he walked to a steely mechanical door that lay directly across from the glass tube where he had been held. It was tightly locked, and the metal had melted somewhat. He doubted that picking the lock would even help him in escaping. Still, it was worth a try.

Inserting his lockpicking tools, he gently fiddled with the pins. Patience was key. He felt the pin with the most resistance set and allowed himself to take a breath of relief. Three more pins remained…but he had picked many a lock, and they were easy to manipulate. He twisted his tension wrench to the unlocked position and tried the doorknob.

It turned and slid open smoothly.

He quickly shut it. Pocketing his pick, Eremes examined the stoppered bottle. He had never heard of enchanted deadly poison losing its effectiveness, and though he had no idea how long he had slept for, he prayed that it was still potent. He applied the entire contents of the bottle to his twin katars. Since he did not know what lay on the other side of that door, he thought, he had better be prepared for it.

It was time. Whatever lurked on the other side of the door might have seen the doorknob turn. They could even be investigating it by now, and Eremes was as prepared as he would ever be. He glanced around the room and checked his gear and weapons one more time, making sure that he had everything.

Turning the door and wincing at the squeak of the rusted hinges, he clambered through the twisted and melted metal and landed lightly on his feet. Looking around, Eremes found himself in a room full of mirrors.

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A/N: Some drabbling to take my mind off of my other RO fic. Writing in present tense is near impossible for me D:


	2. Chapter 2

His logical mind told him that this couldn't be true, as his reflections did not perfectly mirror his actions. His instincts told him that there was no other explanation – how else was he surrounded by seven mirror images, all perfectly identical to his own appearance, albeit translucent and slightly more menacing?

He cloaked and ghosted away from them, mind racing. If only he could _remember_…he squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating and sorting through his haze of fragmented memories. And abruptly, he opened them once more.

Human experimentation. That was what he, Lord Knight Seyren, High Priestess Sorin, and Cecil had been sent to investigate. The church had officially sent just Lord Seyren and Priestess Sorin, and Eremes and Cecil had been contracted to stay in the shadows and eliminate any potential threats – a sort of "extra precaution", they had called it.

Clearly, it had not been enough. He quickly snapped his attention back to the present as his doppelgangers began to Meteor Assault. Though they were blindly attacking at random, there were seven of them and one of him. If he were hit, Eremes knew that his cloaking device would fail and they would be on him in seconds. He could stay on the defensive for hours, but if he didn't attack, he would be locked in a stalemate until he tired and made a mistake.

He cursed softly underneath his breath. There was no way that the clones could hear him, especially with all the noise that they were making from their Meteor Assaults. He had no time for this. He had to find the others, make sure that they were safe, and plan an escape route.

A tantalizingly soft yellow light floated into his peripheral vision. Spinning around to look, Eremes knew instantly that whenever he might think of her in the future, this moment would be the first to come to mind. High Priestess Sorin's tattered pink priestess robe trailed ethereally behind her as the Basilica she had summoned nullified all attacks that Eremes's doppelgangers attempted on her. Her face was peacefully serene, almost as though she was oblivious to the violence around her.

Darting into the Basilica, Eremes grabbed ahold of her hand and began to run. Hearing her startled gasp, he realized that he had forgotten to uncloak and hastily did so now. He glanced over his shoulder and wondered if there would be any safe hiding place they could rest at. Looking around, he saw other ghostly figures – priestesses, knights, and wizards. So there were other prisoners.

"Eremes!" High Priestess Sorin had wrenched her hand from his grasp. "What are you doing?" she asked indignantly.

"Trying to get us away from these creatures so that we may rest and figure out a plan of action," Eremes explained. His voice was raspy from months of disuse. Maybe even years of disuse, he realized. Her voice, however, was as melodious as ever. He wondered how she'd been able to do that, but quickly dismissed it as unimportant for the time being.

She crossed her arms and sat down, mouth drawn into a tight line. Even when she was annoyed, he thought to himself, she still moved with the grace of an angel. No wonder she had been the Church's chosen favorite for the mission. "Well, we can figure out a plan of action right here. Who knows if we'll be able to outrun these beasts, and I have enough gemstones and holy water to tide us over for a while."

He nodded. "Hm. Fair enough. Perhaps you could start by telling me how you got out?"

"I imagine I was in a similar situation as you. I woke up lying on the floor in a pile of glass and a puddle of bubbling green liquid. I'd been hurt a bit, but thanks to the grace of God I was able to heal myself. A pile of gemstones and holy water lay in the corner, so I filled my pockets with all that I could carry and teleported to the other side of the door." She curled an unruly blond strand of hair back behind her ear. "I'm not sure how everything ended up like this. I can only assume that we failed in our mission and that Rekenber has done something terribly unholy in order to create these…" she gestured towards the shambling misty forms. "…these monsters."

"Ah, I see." Eremes had forgotten about teleportation. High Priestess Sorin was capable of teleporting to any random location within the dungeon and back to Prontera. "…you could have left us all behind," he said quietly. "And yet, you didn't."

"I wouldn't have had any way to get back to this place," she replied simply. "Leaving my companions behind goes directly against the teachings of the Church. As a priestess, I cannot fall prey to something so base as a selfish desire to outlive my friends."

"But the staff," Eremes jerked his head at the Croce Staff that she held in her fingers. "You said that the room you were in contained nothing but gemstones and holy water. Where did you get it from?"

"I killed myself."

"What?" He knew that she had been tougher than she looked. But he had not been prepared for that statement.

"Yeah, I know, I don't really seem like the type for existential crises, right?" she grinned at him and he found himself surprised by her dark humor, though he'd seen it come out before. "I needed a staff to cast any useful spells, and the only way to get one seemed to be from off of one of my clones." Her Basilica had been getting steadily duller as she talked, and she stood up now to recast it.

"Hurry," Eremes whispered. "I will be watching your back." After these words, he vanished into the shadows. For High Priestess Sorin had been distracted while recounting her experiences to him, and he had noticed what she had not. In the distance stood a solidly opaque human form. It wore the robes of a high wizard, and it was rapidly approaching the waning Basilica.

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A/N: Oh dear...


	3. Chapter 3

Kathryne Keyron had been sleeping.

The first thing she became aware of was the fact that she was soaking wet. She had never been a big fan of water, she griped. It only made sense that her captors wanted to maximize her suffering. The question was, who were her captors?

She had gone to Lighthalzen in pursuit of a book. While working on her thesis in creating a new spell, a fellow scientist who had read some of her earlier works had sent her a letter mentioning a text in Lighthalzen that might have been able to help with her studies. After she arrived at Lighthalzen, things became a little…blurry.

What had his name been again…Wolfstein? Wolfhart?

She dismissed the name as unimportant. What really mattered, she thought, was that she take stock of her situation as quickly as possible and deduce the best course of action from there.

She was lying in a pile of shattered glass. A thick, viscous liquid seeped out from under her robes. She gingerly stood up and watched as the green liquid slipped off of her clothes, leaving her still drenched in what she presumed was water. The strange substance resembled something she had read about once – oxygen enriched liquid. The novel idea had been proposed a while ago, though she had never seen the actual substance in the flesh. She toyed with the idea of bringing some with her in a vial, for research purposes, then abandoned it. There were far more important matters at hand.

Glancing around, she strode over to a corner of the room and grasped her wizard's staff and spellbooks, which had been covered with fine silky cobwebs and a coarse layer of dust. Brushing off the detritus, she hazarded a guess that the laboratory had been abandoned for at least a year, maybe more. Though how long she had been imprisoned was still a mystery, at least she knew more about the situation.

It also appeared as though she had not aged. Had they been experimenting to find an elixir for immortality?

Clearly, she was in some sort of laboratory which had access to advanced technology. But it had been abandoned…why? Stepping over to the bolted door, she raised her hands in preparation for a jupitel thunder.

But there had been no need for preparation. Lightning sparked between her raised hands and struck the door, blasting a large hole with a blazing ball of light. She jumped back. Since when had she been able to instantaneously cast spells? She hadn't been aware of ever having that skill before. Perhaps…they had tampered with her memory. Or perhaps they had performed experiments on her, on her! She stewed in rage. She had read Lifenbolt's treatise against human experimentation and had wholeheartedly agreed with it. The moral and ethical implications of such research…not to mention the legality was wholly in question.

Perhaps that was why it had been abandoned. The researchers had been discovered or had been close to discovery, and decided that the project was too risky to continue.

Either way, here she was, in an abandoned laboratory, with amplified magical powers. She assumed that she was not alone. An operation of such sale, designed to kidnap and perhaps genetically or chemically modify a wizard of her stature would probably have targeted other classes, most likely a few select characters of the highest caliber.

No doubt there were alarms and safeguards in place to prevent her escape and to protect the laboratory. She would have to be careful, and if – _if_ she found any others, she would have to convince them that she was an ally, not a foe, in case they attacked preemptively. And who knew? The possibility that other foes with similarly enhanced abilities lay on the other side of the door was one that she could not afford to ignore.

An unearthly whisper came from the other side of the door. Footsteps shuffled ever closer towards her position, and though Katherine Keyron did not believe in ghosts, she swore she saw the wisps of an ethereal aura approaching her. It was time. She had thought for long enough, and she was not the type who was all talk and no action.

She flexed her fingers in anticipation. It was time to see what she could do.

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A/N: School? Midterms? What are those?


End file.
